Did you teach them how to be safe online when using them, too?
Bad Santa!
Many of these electronic items allow Internet access or have the ability to send and receive messages, pictures and videos.
As a parent, you should realize that many of these allow your child to play with people from all over the world. They can also communicate with them.
So, it’s time to have a chat with your child about using any or all of these items. Here’s my 3 Post-Christmas Internet Safety Gaming Quick Tips:
1. Make sure your game player knows to not give out personal information to fellow game players. This
is information such as their names, ages, address, school or phone numbers.
2. Check the game system instructions for information about privacy controls and parental restrictions that can protect children.
3. Encourage children to report inappropriate contact with strangers, especially sexually suggestive comments, attempts and such.
For Your Tween
Just because these items connect to the Internet does not mean you actually have to do it. Assess what comfort level you have with your child alone online. Assess their ability to understand the most basic online safety skills. If either of these have the slightest uncomfortable feeling to it, do not connect them to the Internet. Neither you nor your child are ready to take on the world of online strangers at this time.
For Your Teen
Teach them to be part of the solution. Teens understand the Internet and its connections to others, especially people they don’t know. Make sure your teen readily accepts the responsibility to online safety practices in exchange for the privilege of being online, no matter if they TEXT, FLIX or PIX. Empowering them with trust and respect for themselves and others will go a long way.
Posted by Joyce on August 2, 2008 under Child Internet Safety | Comments are off for this article
Child Internet Safety
Solid child internet safety is teaching your child the basics of online safety just as if you would teach them the “real world” physical security. Here are some major hazards for children online and how to deal with them. Hazardous Programs and Software Online These are things like viruses, spyware, worms, and trojans are some of the major threatening software that can be encountered online.
Having security programs that detect and block incoming threats isn’t always enough. Since these damaging programs can ride piggyback disguised as or attached to harmless looking email, make sure that your children never accept email from any sources they don’t know. It’s always good to delete ones with suspicious sounding names and attachments, even from sources that they trust, like friends. Many viruses infect computers without the operator knowing it.
If your child is old to be online they are old enough for you to teach them the importance of maintaining a firewall and anti virus shield. Show them how to operate them, and tell them never to turn it off just because the firewall may be doing something “inconvenient” like blocking a game. Verbal Abuse Online
Whether in chat rooms, forums, clubs or game sites, there are enough small-minded people that could heap verbal abuse on your children. It might be swearing or making sexual advances to them. Sometimes it can even be striking at their religious or ethnic backgrounds. Teach your child that they do not have to put up with this online. When they encounter such a situation, they need to come to you and tell you about it. If they are old enough, they should know how to get recordings or screenshots of the instances, and take them to you. If they are not, you do it. You can then ensure your child’s safety by contacting the moderator of the forum, game, site, etc. in question and having them ban the offending parties.
If the abuse is excessive, you can even opt for taking legal action against the person or people involved, just as you would push a slander and abuse charge if they did it on the street. The internet’s advantage in such cases is that screenshots and official records from the sites can be used as hard evidence, unlike real-life verbal abuse cases where the evidence is usually gleaned from reliable witnesses. You can also report instances to www.WiredKids.org and get help from reliable outside sources, too.
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